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CHDR Diabetes Telehealth Project

Telehealth Project: Technology-assisted Case Management (TACM)-2

This program employs the innovative FORA system for diabetes coupled with nurse case management to optimize care for low income rural adults with type 2 diabetes. The study is inherently novel in that it optimizes two strategies that have been shown to improve glycemic control: nurse case management and telemonitoring interventions to improve effective health care delivery in rural, underserved and minority communities with high rates of type 2 diabetes.

Leonard Egede, MD, serves as primary investigator with Joni Strom Williams, MD, as co-investigator and point of contact. The study provides a practical and sustainable system of diabetes management that helps low-income patients achieve and maintain goals within established treatment guidelines regardless of geographic location. It also employs novel and innovative information technology to improve communication between patients and providers and improve patient adherence with prescribed therapy. We expect this study to enhance the efficiency of care, speed the implementation of effective treatment plans, generate sustained improvement in glycemic control, decrease the morbidity and early mortality associated with type 2 diabetes, and ultimately generate significant reductions in overall health care costs.

The study began at Abbeville Area Medical Center, a general medical and surgical hospital in Abbeville, SC, during the first half of 2014. After that, it spread to eight Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) in Orangeburg County that also service the neighboring communities of Vance, Neeses, St. Matthews, St. George and Denmark. These community-based, non-profit organizations provide culturally-tailored, comprehensive health care services to indigent populations in Orangeburg.

With 2015, we started working with FQHCs in Bamberg and Allendale counties to implement the program, and in 2016, the study will be extended to the I-95 corridor to establish the TACM program at FQHCs in the South Carolina communities of Kingstree and Lake City.